76 SOCIAL SCIENTIST Secondly, Stalin was a past-master at administirovanie Carr has aptly summarised this phenomenon as follows: 'Bolshevism's administrative apparatus ... in the final analysis was a triumph not of reason but of organization' (p. 21). Many authors describe how Stalin's power and influence led to the construction of the USSR—'a centralized polity in which all roads led to the Kremlin', (op.cit) Thus as Robert Daniels argues there was a 'circular flow of power'... when it came to a showdown Trotsky or Bukharin might win the argument but Stalin invariably won the vote' (loc cit). The administrative approach overlaps with the historical approach—for instance, Lenin emphasised that the working class could never carry through a revolution unaided—a view taken by Merk Fainsod amongst others, as we shall see later. Other explanations regarding Stalin's rise to power are ideological and socio-cultural. Regarding the former, the General Secretary (i.e. Stalin) was not so much an opportunist, but a politician balancing between extremes (p.26). Regarding the latter a spectacular event took place in the party i.e. the Lenin enrollment of 1924 (p.28). To summarize: 'no single factor can explain Stalin's rise to power. What one is dealing with are not mutually exclusive explanations but overlapping hypotheses which cannot be easily be prioritized. In chapters 2 and 3 the author deals with the relationship between collectivization and industrialization,—since the two processes are closely interrelated we shall deal with them together. The author begins his narrative on collectivization by saying the smytchka was under great strain from 1927 onwards. The muzhiki (peasantry) reduced grain sales—there was little point in trading food, etc for useless roubles (p. 39). By early 1928 NEP was drawing to a close. In January 1928 Stalin visited Siberia and his observations ought to be quoted in full as follows: In January 1928 the General Secretary visited Siberia. Despite reports of substantial yields sales to state agencies were dismally low prompting allusions to nefarious 'kulak gentry' and the looming peril of undersupply. 'You have had a bumper harvest', he told party administrators, one might say a record one. Your grain surpluses this year are bigger than ever before. Yet the plan for grain procurements is not being fulfilled. Why? What is the reason? . . . Look at the kulak farms: their barns and sheds are crammed with grain; grain is lying open under pent roofs for lack of storage space ... You say that the kulaks are unwilling to deliver grain, that they are waiting for prices to rise, and prefer to engage in unbridled speculation. That is true. But the kulaks . . . are demanding an increase in prices to three times those fixed by the government...